It’s the final day of our “Fifty Shades of Romance in Vancouver” series. Don’t forget to enter below to win a grand prize trip for two to Vancouver!

Fifty Shades Freed will be released in theatres on February 9, and Tourism Vancouver is celebrating the film’s Vancouver presence with a sultry contest guaranteed to add fireworks to your Love Day. Part Three of our three-day “Fifty Shades of Romance in Vancouver” campaign features 15 Vancouver activities that will leave your date swooning.

Singer Louise Burns performs with Dances for a Small Stage point 5. Photo: Renata Raksha

It’s almost February, and love is in the air – or, at least, Vancouver’s version of it.

Some of the city’s best music and dance talent is coming together for Small Stage point 5 – the valentine’s edition. An eclectic array of artists and genres – electronica, Indian dance, waacking, and more – are combining their skills to give audiences their own unique interpretations of amour.

A man and woman walk across the still-relatively-new Lions Gate Bridge, 1939. City of Vancouver Archives. CVA 260-995. Photograph by James Crookall.

It’s likely that even most Vancouverites won’t know the facts or even the names behind many of the stories collected in a forthcoming book on the city and its history. Anvil Press’s Vancouver Confidential, to be published Sept. 15, collects essays by a variety of writers on unknown and obscure stories from the fringes of Vancouver.

Police corruption, blinkered courts, a murder/suicide in Chinatown and the case of the Lovers’ Lane Marauder are all here, featured in a book the publisher promises will “honour the chorus line behind the star performer, the mug in the mugshot, the victim in the murder, the teens in the gang and the ‘slum’ in the path of the bulldozer.”

Inside Vancouver is a multi-author blog, written by Vancouverites about Vancouver. Our goal is to give an insider’s view of Vancouver, to provide information, stories and opinions from the locals’ perspective about this great city.